October 16, 2017

The backcomber

Her hair is coiffured once a month.
Though she goes to bed unkempt,
glamour descends like a dream.
A scissored were-poodle inflicts revenge
for ridiculous, hedgy trims,
those uncouth bubbles of fur he wore,
imposed without his will.
She awakes to a memory of spray
and a beehive, tall as any tower.
Next month’s moon may well mean quiff.
Next month’s moon may just mean mullet.

PS Cottier

If I didn’t think that my next dog must be a rescue dog, I’d be buying a poodle. One of the large ones. But I don’t think I’d clip it into weird shapes like a hedge. One of the more intelligent dogs has to put up with a lot; do they envy the border collie?

One another note, I have a kind of short story, of a vaguely horrible sort, published at AntipodeanSF, called The Blood Parrot. Enjoy!

February 2, 2015

Back of purple ute —
‘Jesus lives here’
holytray or holycab?

P.S. Cottier

I had a vivid image of Jesus balancing on the back of a tray going round a corner, perhaps holding onto a piece of rope, a little like a tethered kelpie. When he faces the back window of the ute, he can read the sticker saying that he lives there, which would become fairly unfunny quite quickly.

Mary hears about the ute surfing idea and is less than impressed

For those who would like to write lots of tiny poems, here’s a link to poet SB Wright’s site which has some information about Post-it note poetry. I am proud to say that the ute-ku is my own invention.

For those of you benighted enough not to know what a ‘ute’ is, it is Australian for utility vehicle. The phrase ‘pick-up truck’ is a crude attempt to achieve a similar effect.

Really short poems rarely appear on the blogs of Tuesday Poets. But perhaps there will be another one this week. Press this link and find out.

***
And if you go here you will find another poem, written in old style English 5/7/5 haiku, about the merits (or limitations) of flash fiction. It is part of the 200th edition of AntipodeanSF. There is also the reprint of a story (a suspiciously prose-poemy story) that was published at AntiSF some time ago.:

November 18, 2014

music notes

piano accordian
the lung that smiles

haversack guts fart
sousaphone

less said the better
triangle

P.S. Cottier

A tiny poem, or notes towards a poem. I am very busy coordinating (I do hate the word facilitating) a course on speculative poetry this month, so my own poems are getting shorter. Fifteen words is hardly a poem, really. If I keep this up the whole thing will be like John Cage’s 4’33”, only fifty years late. I shall call that poem erasure…Or unseen ellipses, which would win the pretentiousness stakes.

I hazard a guess that some of the poems posted by other Tuesday Poets have more than fifteen words. Just for the moment, the usual feather that takes you to New Zealand is sick, so press this link instead. It still works, though it is not as pleasing to look at.

***
A story of mine, a really short thing of 500 words, was recently published at AntipodeanSF(the October issue). Amazingly, this on-line magazine has been around since 1998! A real achievement for the editor, Ion Newcombe. The 200th issue will be appearing quite soon, which is a Proust worth of of flash fiction.

If you would like to hear me read the flash fiction ‘Slippery Worlds’, press this link and go to the AntipodeanSF radio show for November 15th, which is named Mirfak, after a star.

My fiction and my poetry seem to be converging in the universe of Small. I am the Incredible Shrinking Poet.